Drug War No More

After covering drug trafficking and violence in Latin America since 2001, I look through endless photos and videos and ask myself what would be its single most iconic image—one that people could look at in a hundred years and understand.

Is there a lone picture from the past 13 years that can illustrate 60,000 drug war deaths in Mexico in six years, and tens of thousands more in Guatemala, Honduras, Colombia and Brazil? Is there an image that can sum up the complex web that links drug consumption in places like my hometown in England to coca growing in the Andes?

I look at pictures of soldiers burning coca crops and marijuana leaves, which evoke the war on drugs in its most fundamental expression: uniformed troops triumphantly destroying the declared enemy (a plant). I remember the mountain of cash in a Mexico City mansion from the world’s biggest-ever drug cash bust, $207 million, showing it’s all about the money. And I go through images of mothers weeping over the corpses of their sons and daughters, shot and killed in the crossfire between soldiers and drug cartel assassins, a scene repeated on the streets of Ciudad Juárez, Acapulco, Tegucigalpa, Medellín. Perhaps these last images best illustrate the tragedy. The pain of humans losing loved ones to violence stands out beyond all else.

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A victim of drug violence, which has taken 60,000 lives in Mexico in six years.CreditFernando Brito

But the search poses a more rudimentary question. Will people a hundred years from now look back at Latin America’s drug wars as an archaic conflict, now solved? Or will they be suffering from the same cycle of massive drug markets in the United States and Europe and brutal cartel violence south of the Rio Grande?

As we enter 2014, we are in the midst of a fundamental shift in thinking on drug policy across the Americas. It’s the biggest change in direction since the region started down the road to prohibition with the Harrison Narcotics Tax Act of 1914. That U.S. law kickstarted the Latin American drug trade in the form of traffickers smuggling opium poppies north from Mexico’s Sierra Madre.

As the American drug market grew through the hippie Summer of Love and the cocaine disco generation, the U.S. war on drugs became more intense, as did the pressure on Latin American governments to fight supply. Subsequent generations of cartels became ever more violent; we went from talking about a war on drugs to drug wars, culminating in Mexico’s bloodbath, which is perhaps the most costly drug war in world history.

But the discussions on the issue are shifting course at breakneck speed. For decades, any talk of drug legalization was viewed by politicians across the hemisphere as a toxic vote-loser, pooh-poohed by pundits as a nonstarter. Now, active or former presidents of Uruguay, Brazil, Argentina, Bolivia, Guatemala, Colombia and Mexico are all calling for a rethink of prohibitionist policies.

The 2012 ballots in Washington State and Colorado, which became the first places in the world to legalize marijuana for recreational use, left seismic fault lines, as did the White House call to recognize that choice. Uruguay’s 2013 congressional vote to legalize marijuana in an entire country confirmed the snowball effect. Several countries, including Mexico and Colombia, have also decriminalized possession of small quantities of hard drugs—a policy that Washington used to oppose loudly but on which it now is largely silent.

While it’s impossible to deny the change in conversation, Latin America still has a formidable path ahead if it wants to escape the cycle of violence. Though the White House voices little enthusiasm for its war on drugs abroad, it continues to underwrite military-led eradication programs and clampdowns. Low-intensity wars simmer on in marijuana-growing mountains in Mexico, Central American city centers and coca-growing Colombian valleys. And cartels financed by drugs have diversified to a horrific portfolio of crimes, including kidnapping and extortion.

It is yet to be seen how the change in thinking will play out on the ground. While it will take several years, the widespread legalization of marijuana looks increasingly likely, creating the potential of a taxable market in the herb from U.S. cities to Latin American farms. Former President Vicente Fox of Mexico has even announced his support for a U.S. internet entrepreneur in a cannabis venture. Such a market would take billions of dollars out of the hands of cartels and remove the chain link that pulls so many growers and sellers into the world of organized crime. It will also provoke some fiery discussions at the United Nations, whose treaties oblige signatories to fight drugs.

Debates about how to deal with cocaine, heroin and crystal meth are also on the horizon. While it may be decided that these narcotics are too heinous to be legalized, cartel profits could be massively reduced if more effective ways were found to help addicts in the United States and Europe.

Even if illegal drug profits are smashed, Latin American security forces will still have to take on kidnappers and extortionists. But this task would be easier if the perpetrators were local gangs, not cells of transnational trafficking networks. Governments from Mexico to Brazil also need to build functioning justice systems and transform ghettos so that young people have better opportunities than killing for cartels, sometimes for less than $100.

Looking back at the photos of the violence in these areas, I see one that moves me to tears. The picture taken by Fernando Brito shows schoolgirls in Culiacán, Mexico, marching with photos of a classmate killed in crossfire. Their banners call for justice and scream, ‘‘Basta.’’ Their white shirts seem to illustrate peace;their youth, the future. It is a fitting image to sum up the heartbreak of Latin America’s drug violence. Will people look back at it as a turning point, or will they see it as crying into the wind?

Correction:Nov. 28, 2013

An earlier version of this article misstated, in one instance, the date the author began covering drug trafficking in Latin America. It was in 2001, not 2000.

Ioan Grillo, a British journalist, has reported on the Latin American drug trade since 2001. He is the author of ‘‘El Narco: Inside Mexico’s Criminal Insurgency.’’